Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes part of you, step for step, breath for breath.

This is the secret I kept from you, Bails, from myself too: I think I liked that Mom was gone, that she could be anybody, anywhere, doing anything. I liked that she was our invention, a woman living on the last page of the story with only what we imagined spread out before her. I liked that she was ours, alone.

I didn't know love felt like this, like turning into brightness.

This is our story to tell. You’d think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I haven’t. I’ve never once thought about the interpretative, the story telling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever.

Who wants to know that the person you love and need the most can just vanish forever

Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.

Each time someone dies, a library burns.